


Rabid

by i_am_therefore_i_fight



Series: Rabid 'Verse [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bottom Dean Winchester, Dean has access to a safeword, Demon!Dean, Dubious Consent, M/M, Self-Harm, Wincest - Freeform, and the surrounding situation may be triggering to some, bottom!Dean, but chooses not to use it, self injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:31:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7885804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_therefore_i_fight/pseuds/i_am_therefore_i_fight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam gets back, Dean's gone, and there's blood on his sheets. And on the wall. And on the bathroom sink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rabid

When Sam kisses him for the first time since he got back, Dean responds ravenously. He’s starving for this, so he’s aggressive, pushing closer, biting Sam’s lips, winding one hand into Sam’s hair and gripping tightly enough to hurt. Sam doesn’t shove him until he bites down too hard and tastes blood.

And then Sam’s jerking away, stepping back, and Dean’s confused. He reaches for Sam, and Sam flinches.

“Sam?” He searches Sam’s face. Sam is looking at him like he’s a stranger, all over again.

And then Sam says, “I can’t do this." And he turns around and leaves the room, and Dean’s still standing there dumbly with his hand stretched out to the empty air.

_I can’t do this._

Dean doesn’t bother wondering what he did wrong. He knows what he did. He wanted it too much.

 

* * *

 

 

When Sam gets back, Dean’s gone, and there’s blood on his sheets. And on the wall. And on the bathroom sink.

His heartbeat picks up, but he forces himself not to panic. He calls Dean. Dean’s phone rings under a pile of dirty clothes. Sam hangs up.

Looking around, he sees that Dean’s boots are gone, but his leather jacket lies forgotten on the motel room chair. He picks it up and tucks it carefully under his arm before walking out the door.

 

* * *

 

He finds Dean in a parking lot not far from the motel, sitting on the curb with his arms crossed on top of his knees, looking like the American Psycho. He’s not exactly  _covered_  in blood–Sam’s seen Dean covered in blood, and this isn’t it–but his arms and hands and clothes and face are all stained with red.

Sam’s heart seems to stop. His footsteps quicken.  _Please, God, don’t let that be human blood._

"Dean?”

Dean looks up at him, green eyes dull, then away again, shoulders hunching.

Sam swallows.  _Gotta get Dean out of here. Gotta get him away. If he hurt someone, they’ll come looking for him._

“Dean,” he says gently, “you shouldn’t be out here like this.”

“What do you care?” Dean mutters, still not looking at him.

Sam moves a little closer, watching intently in case Dean tries to flee. His brother doesn’t move, except to hitch his shoulders up a little further and turn his face away.

“Dean, come on,” he says, still soothing, like talking to a frightened animal. “Whatever you did, we’ll figure it out, but you have to come with me. We have to get you cleaned up before someone comes looking.”

Dean looks at him sharply, surprised and suspicious. “Whatever  _I_  did?”

Sam cocks his head, eyebrows lifting. After a second, he gestures in a way that encompasses Dean’s clothes. “Whose blood is that?”

“It's  _mine_ ,” Dean replies curtly. “Not that you have any reason to believe me, seeing as how  _demons_   _lie_.”

Sam’s stomach tips violently, like the earth is tilting beneath his feet. “It’s–” Throwing the jacket down on the sidewalk, he quickly moves to kneel in front of Dean, tugging gently at his crossed arms. “What happened? Where are you hurt?”

Dean jerks away, drawing his arms closer to his chest. “I'm  _fine_ ,” he spits. “And what do you care, anyway? I’m not even your fucking  _brother_. I’m just a–” He stops, face twisting like he can’t even get the word out.

Sam opens his mouth and surprises himself by saying crisply, “Don’t throw a fit, Dean.”

Dean looks at him in shock, and Sam goes all in, continuing in the same brusque tone. "You’re my brother, you’ll always be my brother, whether you like it or not. Now quit pouting and show me where you’re hurt.“

Dean stares at him, slightly agape, his face twitching like he wants to still be angry but he’s not sure he can resist the morsel of hope Sam’s offering. "You just assumed–you thought I killed someone,” he points out, but his voice wavers, doubtful now.

“Well, yeah. Dean, you’re my brother, but you’re also an idiot, and in bad circumstances, you sometimes do stupid shit. And, trust me, if anyone knows how easy it is to hurt people without thinking about the consequences, it’s me.” Sam wraps his fingers around Dean’s wrists and tugs again, gently. “Let me see.”

Dean lets him pull his arms out flat. Sam’s breath catches when he sees the long furrows in Dean’s skin. It looks like he’s been clawing at himself. Like he was trying to strip the skin off his bones.

“Oh, Dean,” he whispers, a lump rising in his throat.

Closing his eyes, Dean turns his face away.

Sam strokes along the side of Dean’s arm where there’s unbroken skin. “Come on. I’ve got bandages in the car.”

Dean’s eyes flicker open, up to meet his, and then he looks down again, down at the bloody scratches along the length of his arms. “Don’t need ‘em,” he mumbles. “They’ll heal.”

“Maybe, but, Dean, remember when Meg fell out the window? Her body was  _shattered_  and she was the only thing holding it together. We need to take care of you.” Sam takes a deep breath and clambers to his feet, giving Dean a rueful smile. “Here’s hoping you’ll be in this body a while.”

_Will you still want me if I’m not?_ Dean wonders despairingly, but it’s a moot point. Sam doesn’t even want him  _now_. 

“Come on,” Sam says, and he’s tugging again, pulling Dean to his feet. He wipes his hands on his jeans before reaching down to pick Dean’s jacket up off the sidewalk, and Dean swallows, feeling oddly choked by the idea of Sam taking a second to grab that jacket on the way out the door, for no other reason than because it's  _Dean’s_  and Dean is supposed to have it.

Dean follows him loyally to the car, trying not to fidget while Sam gets the first aid kit, obeying when Sam orders him to take off his shirt. Sam proceeds to bundle the shirt up and use it to try and scrub off some of the excess blood; he assures Dean that he’ll put down towels so that no blood gets on the seats. And Dean’s mixed up all over again by his thoughtfulness, by his implication that Dean should care about the state of the Impala–which, of course he does. Why wouldn’t he? The Impala is his–right?

_It’s only mine if I’m still Dean._

He doesn’t know who he is.

But he’s relieved and pleased by the idea of putting down towels, so maybe there’s still a little bit of Dean Winchester left in him.

 

* * *

 

By the time he gets out of the shower, the wounds on his arms have scabbed over. They hurt, but the pain is just white noise. It doesn’t mean anything.

Sam’s waiting for him when he comes out of the bathroom. He doesn’t wait for him to get dressed–instead, he takes a step closer, settles his hands on Dean’s hips, and kisses him tenderly, closed-mouth and warm, softly brushing his lips back and forth over Dean’s.

Dean doesn’t know how he’s expected to react, so he just stands frozen, arms stiff at his sides. He wants to pull Sam’s body flush against his, to grind their hips together, to lick into his mouth and growl and moan and scrape his nails down Sam’s back and–

But he doesn’t want Sam to leave again, so he doesn’t do anything. He just waits for Sam to take what he wants.

Sam pulls back a moment later, his face impossibly gentle and sad, and Dean wonders with a sick feeling if he’s just failed the same test twice in a row.

But then Sam lifts his huge hands to cup Dean’s face tenderly, and he rests his forehead against Dean’s and whispers, “Sorry.”

Now Dean  _really_  doesn’t know what’s happening, and he stands there, rooted to the spot, as Sam kisses him again in the same way as before, all soft and slow, like he’s one of those puzzles you have to coax into opening instead of trying to apply force.

“Sam,” he says against his brother’s lips, and  _fuck,_  his voice is so broken, so pleading–in his time as a torturer for hell, he’d forgotten he could even sound like this, but now he sometimes thinks he’s not even capable of talking to Sam any other way. “I don’t know what I’m doin’, here, man.”

Sam kisses his lips one more time and then pulls back just slightly, their faces still only a breath apart, his thumbs stroking slowly over Dean’s cheeks. “I know. Sorry.”

Dean swallows. He wants to ask why. He wants to say he’s sorry too.

“Tell me what to do,” he says instead, roughly. “Just tell me what you want me to do, Sam, and I’ll do it, I swear.”

“I know you will.” Sam nuzzles their mouths together again, not exactly a kiss, but it makes Dean’s stomach flip-flop just the same.

“Sam,” Dean says, a little desperately, because he still doesn’t understand, he’s not sure why Sam changed his mind, or what exactly he changed his mind from, or what he’s thinking, or what he expects Dean to do.

Sam’s hands drop to his hips, and he takes hold of Dean gently and starts walking him backward, still placing tiny kisses on his bottom lip. Dean doesn’t understand until his knees hit the edge of the bed and he goes down, bouncing against the mattress, breath coming in quick little bursts as he realizes that he’s sprawled out mostly-naked on the bed beneath Sam’s gaze and that he still doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing.

As if reading his mind, Sam huskily orders, “Don’t do anything unless I say so.” Without waiting for a response, he tugs Dean’s towel off—leaving him completely bare and vulnerable and quivering with fear and arousal and emotion—and kneels between his brother’s splayed knees.

Dean whimpers and then tenses, wondering if that counts as going against Sam’s earlier command.

“You can make noise, but no talking,” Sam says, again as if he’s aware of Dean’s thoughts, caressing the inside of Dean’s thigh with just his fingertips. “And you can grab the sheets or a pillow if you want. Don’t touch me or yourself.”

Panting, Dean nods.

“One more thing.”

_Anything, Sam. Anything._

“Don’t come until I tell you to.”

Dean’s high-pitched groan is cut off with a squeak as something hot and wet slides up the length of his half-hard cock. He squeezes his eyes shut, certain that he wouldn’t be able to handle the sight of Sam licking him like an ice-cream cone.

Sam’s fingers curl over his thighs, gripping him hard enough to leave visible finger-marks; without warning, he yanks Dean’s legs up and slings them over his shoulders, the new position lifting and spreading Dean’s ass, making him vulnerable to Sam’s gaze and touch. Dean gives a little cry of shock and squirms, his hole clenching on nothing.

“Stay still, Dean. I’m not gonna tell you again.”

Whimpering, Dean forces himself to stop writhing. His abs flutter with the effort of remaining still as Sam’s mouth moves lower, tonguing each of his balls gently and then placing a sucking kiss against his perineum. _Sam, oh, god, Sam._ He wants to say his brother’s name aloud but Sam’s instructions were clear. Instead, he chants it like a mantra inside the confines of his own mind. _Sam. Sam. Oh, god, please, Sam, Sam…_

At the first ghosting of Sam’s breath over his hole, Dean gasps and clutches the comforter on the bed, shaking with the effort to not arch up, not push forward into Sam’s mouth, not do anything. To follow orders.

“Good boy,” Sam whispers, and Dean _whines_.

_Sammy, please, please, oh god, I’ll do anything for you._

His throat closes and his chest feels like it’s expanding as the weight of that thought hits him.

That, he thinks, is what Sam’s trying to show him.

This— _this_ is where he belongs. This is who he is.

And god, it feels like solid ground, when he’s been free-falling since the moment he set foot back on Earth.

The tip of Sam’s tongue flicks against his hole, and Dean’s breath stutters as he’s suddenly reminded that this body is a virgin.

God, he wants to say Sam’s name. He’d never be able to verbalize everything he’s feeling but Sam’s name is the only thing that really matters anyway. The most important thing he could ever say.

A real sob, quiet and stricken, breaks out of him.

Sam pauses, turning to press his nose against the inside of Dean’s thigh. “You okay?”

Dean sniffles, not sure how to answer.

“It’s okay. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Sam, please let me talk,” Dean blurts. “Please, please, I wanna say your name, please just let me say your name.”

Sam sighs, the gust of warm breath tickling Dean everywhere from his cock to his hole. “I love it when you ask me for what you want,” he murmurs against Dean’s thigh, stubble scraping the sensitive skin. He plants a kiss in the crease between Dean’s thigh and groin. “You can talk. It’s okay.”

“Oh, god, Sam, Sam, please, I need—I need—”

“What do you need, Dean?”

“You. You. I need you, please, Sammy, please—”

Sam nuzzles the inside of his thigh again, giving it a gentle nip. Then he stands, letting Dean’s legs slip off his shoulders, and pats Dean’s hip reassuringly. “Sit tight.”

Bereft of his breath and his tongue and his touch, Dean whimpers pitifully. He needs Sam, needs his direction, his firm, guiding hand.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Dean.” Sam’s rummaging in a drawer, Dean can hear it, but he doesn’t look, just stares unseeingly at the ceiling, trying to control the hitch in his breath.

“Please don’t leave me.”

“I won’t.” Sam steps between his legs again, and taps Dean’s thigh with two fingers. “Lift up.”

Dean lifts his legs obediently, biting his lip as he feels his hole flutter with the shift. Sam grabs his knees and throws them over his shoulders, still standing, lifting Dean much higher than before. A moan slips past the teeth digging into Dean’s lower lip.

“Easy,” Sam says calmly, popping the cap on a bottle of lube and squirting some into his hand.

“Oh, god, Sam.”

“I’m gonna fuck you, Dean. As long and as hard as I want.”

“God.”

“It’s not up to God. Or you. Or anyone else. You’re mine, and you’ll do what I tell you.”

“ _Sam._ ”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes. Please, Sam.”

Sam leans down to kiss him, forcing Dean to bend almost double with his legs still over Sam’s shoulders, and he presses one slick finger against Dean’s hole and slowly pushes in.

“ _Sam_.” Dean’s voice cracks, Sam’s name turning into a sob on his lips. Sam kisses it away, catches Dean’s bottom lip in both of his as he moves his index finger in and out of Dean’s body.

“Every part of you is mine,” Sam whispers, nibbling on Dean’s lip as he presses his index finger more deeply into Dean’s virgin body. “You don’t belong to Hell, Dean. You don’t belong to Alistair. You don’t belong to the crossroads demon. You don’t even belong to yourself. You belong to me.”

Dean’s eyes burn. “Sam.”

“Dean.” Sam drags his mouth down to Dean’s jaw, scraping his teeth over the bone.

“Please… I… I need…”

“What do you need, Dean?”

“Please,” he whimpers, too overwhelmed to articulate what he wants, that he wants to hold Sam, to cling to him, to bury himself in his brother so deep that he can’t see or feel or remember anything but Sam.

Sam pauses, his index finger curling just slightly, and returns his mouth to Dean, pressing their lips together for a warm moment. “Tell me.”

“Let me ride you.”

Sam starts moving his finger again, as slowly and steadily as before. “No. I’m in control, Dean. Not you.”

“ _Please_.” Dean can feel tears rising, tears of frustration as much as anything else, as he fumbles his words, searching vainly for what he wants to say. “Please. I wanna touch you, I need to—I need—”

“Put your arms around my neck,” Sam suggests quietly. “No hair-pulling, no scratching.”

Dean wraps trembling arms around his brother’s neck as Sam kisses down the vein that runs from behind his ear, and _this_ —this is what he needed. To just hang onto Sam for dear life. Now, ironically, he can let go.

The blunt tip of a second finger is pressing gently against the rim of his hole, and Dean flexes, moaning as his body tightens around the thick finger already inside him.

“Open up for me,” Sam whispers.

Dean blows out his breath, fingers curling into the collar of Sam’s shirt, and flexes his hole again, trying to will himself to relax. A low groan escapes him as Sam’s second finger presses inside.

Sam makes a pleased rumbling noise as he feels Dean opening to him. “Just think,” he breathes against the hollow of Dean’s throat. “My cock is the only one that will ever be inside this body, Dean. Think about that.”

“Sam.” Dean closes his eyes as a single tear slips out. He wants Sam to fuck him so much it’s like a physical ache.

“Dean,” Sam replies easily, and god, it hurts so good every time Sam uses his name, like another bloody chunk of his missing identity has begun painstakingly generating new flesh. Scarred but functional.

He adds a third finger after a little while, and Dean’s going out of his mind. He doesn’t know if he can make it.

“S-Sam.”

“Dean.”

“P-please, can I…”

“What?”

“I want to—can I move? I want t-to—”

Unruffled, Sam brushes a kiss over his cheekbone. “No, but if you want me to speed up, you can ask.”

“P-please. Sam, I need more. Please.”

Sam doesn’t increase his speed much, but he presses his fingers all the way in and then twists his wrist, and Dean gasps and bucks up as sharp pleasure jolts through him.

“Sam, jesus! Sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Sam presses a kiss to his forehead. “Just do your best to stay still.”

“I will. I am.”

Sam adds his pinkie to the three fingers already inside, and Dean groans, long and low.

“Don’t get impatient, Dean.”

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“I’m in control.”

“Yeah.”

Sam presses all four fingers in as far as they’ll go, and Dean’s groan this time lasts for several seconds.

Then he’s withdrawing them, and Dean is suddenly empty. His instinctive fear has him clinging more tightly to Sam’s neck, biting off a whimper.

“Easy, Dean.” There’s the sound of a zipper, then slippery flesh on flesh, and—

“Oh, _oh_ —”

The tip of Sam’s lubricated cock is pressing gently against Dean’s hole, pushing in so slowly that he’s not sure it’s moving at all.

Dean unclenches one white-knuckled fist from Sam’s shirt and uses it to cover his eyes, feeling more tears slipping quietly out. He’s so overwhelmed he can’t speak, he can’t move, can’t do anything but cling to Sam and try not to weep.

Sam’s teeth close on his shoulder, not hard, just enough to exert pressure, and he continues to push inexorably into Dean, filling him up.

An ugly sob bursts out of Dean like a dam breaking and he covers his face with both hands, shoulders shaking, hot tears spilling out in a river.

“Dean?” Sam’s stopped moving. He sounds worried. Dean feels one of Sam’s hands come to rest on top of his, thumb stroking over his knuckles. “Am I hurting you?”

Dean shakes his head, still hiding his face in his hands, and another strangled sob escapes him.

Sam takes hold of both his wrists and gently tugs his hands away, revealing Dean’s tear-streaked, black-eyed face. He pauses.

Dean stares back at him miserably, wanting to disappear, wanting to sink through the mattress and the floor until Sam’s steady, unpitying hazel eyes can’t ever find him again.

Leaning down, Sam crushes their mouths together in a graceless kiss, his nose mashed against Dean’s cheekbone, his thumbs rubbing over the raw pink skin of Dean’s wrists.

“It’s okay, Dean,” he breathes, and begins to thrust.

It hurts, but pain is just white noise and Dean never wants him to stop. He cries out, ragged, gravel-roughened voice lifted and breaking, as Sam pounds into him; when Sam releases one of his wrists to wrap a hand around his cock, the cry rises to a scream and breaks, shatters, leaving Dean arched and straining and open-mouthed and utterly voiceless.

Pumping Dean’s shaft fast and hard with one fist, Sam slams his hips against Dean’s, sheathing his thick cock fully inside his brother, and growls, “You can come.”

“SAM!” Dean screams on an inhale, in a voice like the windstorm at the edge of the earth, the fall into oblivion. His seams are splitting and he’s afraid—afraid that everything will come pouring out and he’ll become nothing.

Sam works him through the orgasm, still stroking his shaft, still thrusting mercilessly into him. He presses his forehead against Dean’s, whispering Dean’s name in time with each of his brother’s sobbing breaths. When he finally comes with a grunt, he moves his hand from Dean’s cock to his hip, squeezing it hard, but the hand on Dean’s wrist he keeps loose, still gently stroking Dean’s scratches with his thumb.

He pumps lazily in and out of Dean as he comes, gently biting his way down the side of Dean’s neck, then returning to kiss his tears away. At last he softens too much to stay inside, and he slips out, come dribbling from Dean’s puffy hole as he does.

Dean mouths “Sammy,” and Sam, kissing his own name off Dean’s lips, reaches down with one hand, gathering a string of come up onto two fingers and gently pushing it back into Dean’s hole. Dean closes his eyes again, unable to even react beyond a generalized twitch.

Sam undresses then, cleaning himself and Dean before pulling down the covers on the bed, urging Dean under them. Sam climbs in behind and nestles himself against the curve of Dean’s back. He’s naked, and Dean finds himself strangely grateful for that, because now they’re _both_ vulnerable.

Dean closes his eyes, wishing he could make himself small and invisible; he’s weirdly, superstitiously afraid the moment will shrivel up and blow away if he breathes too loudly.

_This doesn’t change anything,_ whispers a traitorous part of him, the part that knew no one was coming for him in hell, the part that predicted that Sam would never entirely accept him after he returned. _You’re still a demon, and he’ll never really trust you._

But that thought just makes him hold onto Sam’s arm more tightly, because the more limited his time is, the more he needs to cling to it.

Sam’s arm tightens around his waist, and Dean can almost imagine that it’s in response to his need, his desperation to be held as close to Sam as possible for the time being.

“What are you thinking?” murmurs Sam’s voice next to his ear, and he swallows and shakes his head.

Sam kisses his ear. “Tell me.”

Dean shakes his head again, trembling a little. _Please, Sam, I just want this to last a little longer._

Moving his hand up to rest over Dean’s heart, Sam presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Was I too rough?” he asks, worried. “I know we haven’t talked about it since you came back, but I figured you’d remember the safeword…”

_It was perfect, Sam, you have no fucking idea._

“It was fine,” Dean says.

Sam rubs his nose against Dean’s shoulder blade. “Something’s bothering you.”

Dean stares at the wall, trying to keep his mind blank, but like a vengeful ghost, Sam’s words rise in his mind:

_I can’t do this._

“I’m still a wild animal, you know,” he says without inflection. The afterglow didn’t last as long as he wanted, but oh well. Time for emotional shutdown. Abandon ship.

Misunderstanding, Sam chuckles and pats his chest. “Yeah, sure you are, Dean. D’you get that out of a _Cosmo_ magazine?”

“No, I mean—” Shoving Sam’s arm away, Dean swings his legs over the edge of the bed and sits up, hunching his shoulders. Out from under the blankets, the room feels colder than he remembers. “At any second, I could go back to being the person I was this morning. The one you couldn’t—” _couldn’t love—_ “the one who bit you.”

Sam shifts in the bed behind him, and Dean can picture him propping his head up with his arm, frowning the way he does when he’s faced with a particularly delicate translation.

“You are that person,” Sam says slowly.

Dean snorts. _You wouldn’t have fucked me if you thought that._

“Yeah,” he says. “I am. And you didn’t want him.”

“That’s not true.”

Dean gets up from the bed at that, stalking to the other side of the room, trying to keep a grip on himself—on his smoldering anger, on the _pain_ , pain that feels like screaming the way screaming feels like white noise to him. Pain that feels real when real pain doesn’t.

“You said ‘I can’t do this’ and _left_ ,” he says, facing the wall instead of Sam. “What the hell are you gonna try to tell me that meant?”

The bed creaks, and Sam’s voice is confused and trepidatious when he replies. “Dean, that’s not—you just _scared_ me.”

“Yeah,” Dean says dully, feeling like his heart’s sinking slowly into his stomach and getting eaten up by the acid.

“I didn’t mean like—”

“Let’s face it, Sam,” Dean cuts him off, not wanting to prolong it anymore, not when this pain hurts so much worse than the white-noise pain of hell. “I’m dangerous.”

“Dean, stop.”

Dean plunges ahead anyway. “I’m a rabid dog, and eventually you’re gonna have to put me down.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“That’s not what I meant,” Sam says, quiet and dangerous, “and don’t you dare ever suggest it again.”

Dean turns, and Sam’s staring at him coolly, sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands clasped loosely between his knees.

“I meant,” he says, gaze steady, “that it seemed unlike you. And that scared me, because I thought it meant that I’d really lost you.”

“You sure you haven’t?” Dean asks, even though it’s the last thing he wants to ask, the last thing he wants Sam to be thinking about.

“Yeah, I am,” Sam says.

Another pause.

“How can you possibly know that for sure?” Dean asks in a barely-there voice, wondering how he can talk at all when he’s sure that his heart has now taken up permanent residence in his throat

Sam shrugs. “ ‘Cause you’re still you.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re still stubborn as hell. You still punish yourself for things that aren’t your fault.” Sam studies him for a moment before softly adding, “You still think you have to _earn_ love.”

“Don’t I?”

“No,” Sam says simply.

Dean grits his teeth. “Why not? I can’t keep trading on your dead brother’s face, Sam. One of these days you’re gonna realize what your bunkmate is, and you’re gonna wonder how you ever mistook me for someone you could—” He stops abruptly, unable to finish the sentence even in his own head. The screaming-pain is getting worse. He rubs his chest unconsciously, thinking how stupid it is that metaphorical heartbreak can feel so literal.

“Someone I could love?” Sam finishes for him, quietly.

Dean shrugs, looking away.

“I do love you.”

Scowling, Dean returns his gaze to the man on the bed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Sam.”

“I think I do,” Sam says.

“Yeah?” Dean bares his teeth, allowing the darkness to seep out, flat black overtaking the green in his eyes. “Take a good long look, Sam! Is this what you wanna be waking up next to for the rest of your life? Huh?”

“Yes,” Sam replies, calm.

Dean opens his mouth, then closes it.

“Oh,” he says.

“You done?” Sam asks patiently.

“No, not really,” Dean says, even though he can’t think of anything else he wants to say.

Sam sighs. “That’s okay. We’ve got time.”

“This isn’t gonna work out the way you want,” warns Dean, and he can feel his heart beating so feebly, broken as much by hope as by pain. “There’s not gonna be a happy ending.”

“You’re here,” Sam says simply, “so there already is.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at i-am-therefore-i-fight.tumblr.com/post/63796586667.


End file.
